It is despicable that someone defaced posters advertising a
speech by the Radical Right’s Ann Coulter, who lauds Joe McCarthy, American Fascist, as a hero. We should all speak out against the
childish vandalizing of these posters. In fact, the Democratic Party should pay Coulter to speak — she scares the hell out of some
conservatives, too.
However, we should all also speak out against lying in order to infiltrate, spy on and denounce your classmates,
as a young Republican did on campus after this incident (and as police everywhere do today, with John Ashcroft’s blessing). This kid
will go far in the Bush administration.
As to the Republican students’ ”study” indicating there are few Republicans on the
faculty, let’s put aside their spying and efforts at intimidation and bullying and ask, if this is true, why? Maybe being a teacher
isn’t the best route to riches, fame or power? Maybe being a teacher requires real compassion, not pretend. Maybe a campus is not the
best place to be if you need everyone to agree with you and ask no questions, or if you’re just ”incurious”. Better the White
House. mjh
[printed in the Daily Lobo 3/12/04]
Read the background stories …
Right-wing speaker’s image defaced – Daily Lobo – NewsBy Felicia Fonseca
A poster advertising tonight´s cancelled
lecture by author and political activist Ann Coulter was vandalized Monday at Popejoy Hall. …
On Monday morning, [Scott Darnell,
president of the College Republicans.] said he started to hear reports the posters had been taken down or vandalized. …
After a walk
around campus Monday, Ryan Brightbill, a UNM junior, said he went looking for the Coulter fliers he had helped put up Sunday. He said
when he saw the table for UNM’s College Democrats at the Duck Pond, he stopped to talk about Coulter.
“I acted like a Democrat
and said it was great that someone was writing on the fliers,” he said. “A girl at the duck pond said, ‘We had been taking them down
and wrote some dirty comments on them as well.'”
Brightbill said as he left he thanked the group and said he was a College
Republican.
Democrats – Daily Lobo – NewsBy Felicia Fonseca
UNM’s College Republicans say there is a biased political atmosphere and climate
on campus.
The group released the results of a four-month study Wednesday that found 83 percent of registered professors at UNM are
Democrats, 11 percent are Republicans and 6 percent are classified as other.
“There is a one-sided body,” said Scott Darnell,
chairman of the College Republicans.
Daily Lobo (7 letters — including mine — and a column on this topic)
ABQjournal: College GOP’s Case a Stretch by Jim Belshaw
The complaint
of the College Republicans is common. It is received truth at campuses across America that conservatives are an oppressed
minority.
It is at once a hard sell and the core of the conservative party line: We are victims. Victims of liberals,
victims of the media, victims of the faculty.
As a friend put it, “I expect them one day to file a class action suit to
reclaim their ancestral lands in Tanoan.”
They’ve done well with victimhood. They’ve prospered with it. But the victim
sell becomes harder when they hold the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, several hundred 24/7 talk radio stations, a
TV network, numerous magazines, 20 or 30 syndicated columnists, Mel Gibson, Dennis Miller and the Supreme Court. (We haven’t forgotten
Florida already, have we?)
It’s hard reconciling great swaths of power with oppressed victimhood.
So I have a
request: Don’t do it. It’s unbecoming. You don’t look good doing it.
We already have far too many victims in America. It
would be good for the country if the College Republicans could find a way to ease back on the victim throttle.